


epilogue, continued

by airdeari



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, kind of drabbly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 11:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8749015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airdeari/pseuds/airdeari
Summary: It was unmistakably him. Even so, Mikleo had to ask, squeezing his warm hand as if afraid it were immaterial.
"Sorey?"
He blinked. "That's my name, isn't it?" he asked slowly.
Lailah had warned him about this so many times.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have been sitting on this piece since July thinking to myself "nah it's not good enough everyone's probably written this prompt it doesn't go anywhere" but I hope you enjoy it as a drabble if nothing else.
> 
> (finally posting something outside of the zero escape series lmao rip)

Mikleo did not notice that the silhouette above him hesitated to pull him to safety. Both were lost in the same heartwrenching haze of beloved memories, struggling to believe in the dim shape of a long-lost friend.

His voice was rounder, perhaps deeper, when he hoisted Mikleo out of the pitfall with a soft sound from his chest. Mikleo touched the stone floor to steady himself on solid ground, but his hand fell back to the Shepherd's glove as if drawn.

His eyes were still the same captivating green, but his hair had faded to the pale color belonging to seraphim. Mikleo followed his white ponytail to its golden end while absently stroking the feather of the same color hanging around his wrist. Hundreds of years ago, Mikleo would have mistaken him for his armatized form with Edna.

It was unmistakably him. Even so, Mikleo had to ask, squeezing his warm hand as if afraid it were immaterial.

"Sorey?"

He blinked. "That's my name, isn't it?" he asked slowly.

Lailah had warned him about this so many times. Edna had warned him, Zaveid had warned him. They wanted to protect his heart, but Mikleo had not had a day free from heartache in almost a thousand years. Some days it lingered in his chest as a hollow feeling, some days it clawed at him from inside. With his first words, the new seraph smashed Mikleo's heart as hard as he had when he was a human boy who sacrificed himself to protect the world he loved so dearly.

"Even if he's reborn—"

"Don't say _if_."

"—he won't have many memories of his human life." Lailah clasped her hands together and gazed at the ground. "It's not your fault, or his, or anyone's. It's… just the way things are."

Mikleo lifted his reluctant fingers from Sorey's hand. He lowered his eyes to the black abyss from which Sorey had pulled him, and into which he had an ugly yearning to fall again. Without moving his lips save a tremble, and with something swelling in his throat, he said, "Thank you for saving me."

"Is something wrong?" Sorey asked, cocking his head to one side.

"Nothing," said Mikleo stiffly, shifting to his feet. "You're very kind. Thank you."

He brushed dust and dirt from his knees and smoothed the length of his tunic. Sorey's fingers had left an imprint on the wrist of his disheveled glove. He hesitated before pulling it snugly back on. All the while, he tried to avoid Sorey's round, innocent eyes following his every move.

Then the young earth seraph whispered, "Mikleo?"

There is nothing quite like those rare moments when someone says your name aloud, a name you've heard for years—centuries, in Mikleo's case—but it suddenly sounds like music. Sorey had always had a talent for saying his name with such joy that it sent Mikleo's heart aflutter. The sound was a plaintive melody in his mother's farewell. It flooded his body with warmth the first and last times Sorey looked in his eyes and said, "Lusrov Rulay."

To Mikleo's ears, this whisper was a soft symphony, trembling with bliss. His heart pumped his body full of helium. "Sorey?" he squeaked, as if his lungs were also full of helium.

"Mikleo, I—I don't really remember much of what happened," Sorey said as he rose, his eyebrows drawn together in pleading earnest. "I know I had a human life before this, and I thought—I thought we were…"

He took a half-step back after many steps forward. His eyes flicked back and forth, studying Mikleo's expression. He raised a tentative hand towards Mikleo's face, then pulled it back and tucked it behind his own head with a sheepish grin.

"I don't remember anything. I don't know where this is coming from," Sorey chuckled nervously. "But you… you must have been really special to me. I just wanted to see you again. Like I was missing you all this time, if—if that makes sense."

Mikleo swallowed, folding his arms around a stomach full of butterflies. "I missed you, too," he uttered.

"How long has it been?" Sorey asked, moving a step closer. "You look so different, Mikleo. Or is that just my bad memory?"

"It's… been a long time," Mikleo said. He watched himself curl and uncurl his fingers. "A lot has changed."

Lailah said he looked cooler every day, flashing a bright smile with no feeling. Edna quipped that she meant _colder_. He was terse with his old friends and loath to make new ones. His only comforts had come from exploring the ruins, sometimes speaking aloud to the imagined voice of his dearest.

"What were we?" Sorey asked in wonder. "To each other."

Mikleo stared at the carvings on the stone walls, his eyes glossing over art that he could not cherish with the passion of two. "Childhood friends," he said with a set jaw. "We liked to explore ruins like these together."

Sorey's eyes filled with the same awe of his youth as he gazed about the inner chamber of the ruins. "It's beautiful," was all he could say, because the Celestial Record was gone from his mind, the history books, the years of adventuring and uncovering hidden relics, the late-night hypothesizing and dreaming.

"Is that all you liked about the ruins?" Mikleo asked, trying and failing to keep the hurt from creeping into his voice.

"Well, it's more than that," Sorey said. "Someone must have built these, right? It's like I'm looking into their world, being here. This is a link to past civilizations. That's what really gets me. It makes me want to know more about them."

Mikleo allowed his lips to turn up at the corners.

"So we were childhood friends," Sorey murmured, gazing at the architecture with his hands on his hips. "Did we stay close after we grew up?"

"You never grew up," Mikleo muttered. "You were eighteen when you…"

When they faced Heldalf and Maotelus, Mikleo thought it was he who was sacrificing himself when he parted from Sorey for the last time, sending his energy through the dragon. In the end, Sorey freed him and his fellow seraphim when he granted Heldalf salvation in death. His barely conscious energy slipped past Sorey and away from the heart of the malevolence. He thought he remembered seeing Sorey give a bittersweet smile as a farewell.

"We were something else," Sorey insisted, holding a hand to his chin as he frowned. "We were something important."

The words Mikleo wanted to say had been on the tip of his tongue in front of Sorey before. Last time, they were standing at a cliff's edge in Elysia. Both times, Mikleo kept his feelings to himself.

"We were Shepherd and Sub-Lord," he explained. "You ended the Age of Darkness. I guess you could call that important."

"Shepherd," Sorey repeated in awe. He could remember nothing of his time as the mythical hero, nor of the ancient legends, but the word carried gravity in its faint memory.

Mikleo gave a long sigh, but it did not relieve the weight in his chest. "There's a lot of history. I'm not really sure I'm up to explaining it right now."

"Not to mention, it might be too much for me to take in," Sorey said with a nervous smile, scratching his temple. "There's so much swirling around in my head. Everything else from my past can wait. I'm just glad I found you."

His gaze rolled to Mikleo with unabashed adoration. Sorey had always regarded him this way, whether or not he saw. Lailah started to see those loving stares, and Edna caught on, too. Despite how little Dezel paid attention to anything but his own motivations, he noticed immediately. Zaveid was slow on the uptake, but after Sorey cracked one too many jokes about not being into girls, even he figured it out.

"Mikleo, were we in love?"

Mikleo's spine went so stiff, he had to take a step back to steady himself. His face flushed with unbearable heat.

"Ah, s-sorry, I didn't mean to," Sorey stammered, waving both hands. "I just thought—I don't remember, I was just wondering if that's… the way it was, with us. You just… you feel so big in my heart, I can't really explain it. And, I mean, just seeing you now, it's…"

"We," Mikleo forced out, stumbling even farther backwards, "we never said we were in love."

Sorey's smile vanished. His lips fell slightly ajar as he lowered his hands and shifted his weight away from Mikleo.

"We never said it," Mikleo repeated, staring at the empty space between their feet. "I don't know why we never said it. I think we just both knew it, so we never had to say anything."

A tremble disturbed his voice. His eyes felt hot. He lowered his head until his chin touched his chest.

"I almost said something. Right before the end," he said. "But I thought it would just make it harder to say goodbye, so…"

His inhale sounded like the hiccup of a sob.

"I don't think Gramps ever talked to you about it, but he started telling me to be careful. Because someday you were going to leave the village to live with other humans, and even if you never left the village, you were going to—to _die_ so fast, and you did, and I…"

His voice had lost its tone. It shook and warbled as the floodgates in his eyes and heart opened simultaneously.

"I never told you," he whispered, clutching his chest. "I just wanted to tell you how much you mean to me. That would have been enough for a thousand years."

"A thousand years?" Sorey breathed.

Mikleo rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. "Not—not quite a thousand. Not yet."

"I left you alone for all that time?"

" _You_ didn't do anything," Mikleo snapped. "You forget everything that happened to us. You might as well be a different person altogether."

Though the last thing he wanted to do was get mad at Sorey, his frustration got the better of him. His hands shook by his sides, no matter how tightly he clenched them into fists.

"Am I really that different?" Sorey asked.

"I don't know. Not really," Mikleo muttered, folding his arms. "You're just as dopey as ever, looks like."

Sorey grinned, scratching the back of his head. "Not sure I can argue with that," he said, plodding closer. "Something about you's just like I remember, too."

He lowered one hand as the other drifted forward.

"You're so beautiful," he said.

Mikleo drew in a soft gasp when Sorey's fingers brushed his cheek on their way to his hair. Heat blossomed from his chest. His limbs turned to jelly, his brain to mush. Sorey's eyes sucked him in for a long, perilous moment.

"We can just get to know each other again, right?" Sorey said, closing his eyes with a cocky grin.

Mikleo's legs gave out. He fell forward, collapsing into Sorey's warm chest. Sorey's arms closed behind him, squeezing to hold him upright. He did not know how long he cried.

"Mikleo, I'm so sorry," Sorey murmured at intervals. "It must have been so hard, living alone all these years. I could barely manage a day without seeing you, and I didn't even remember all the time we spent together."

"I'm here now, Mikleo. We can explore the ruins together again. You don't have to do it alone anymore."

"I'll stay with you. I'll stay up all night with you just to talk. We can talk about everything I've forgotten and everything that's happened since I've been gone. We can go back to the way it was."

"I'm never going away again, Mikleo. I'm here forever. I'll never leave your side."


End file.
